Reverence: MC Romance (The Davis Chapter Book 3) (13 page)

“So did your father explain the…
arrangement
?”

Cute. He was dancing around the real words. The real meaning. I nodded, anyway. “You get me, he gets guns. Were there any finer details that I’m not aware of?”

Harris crossed his legs. “He said you and I could work those out.” I didn’t like the confidence in his voice one bit. Maybe it was just a put-on, but he thought he had it all figured out.

 
A chill came over me, and I crossed my arms over my chest. This dude was more disgusting than I’d expected. “Why don’t we discuss them now?”

Even in the dim light, when Harris smiled, I could see his jagged teeth. “Sounds dandy. Where do you want to start?”

“How well do you know my father?”

It was not the topic of conversation that Harris expected. “What?”

“I’m sure he made you promises. I’m sure he sold you on the Devil’s Branch. I’m sure he sold you on some sort of protection, too.”

“Well, yeah.” Harris pushed himself up from the truck. “I don’t follow. I thought you two were on the same page but whatever. He told me about some drug lord who his gang had taken down. Made the club out to be underground heroes of some kind. He said I could look it up and I did. I found a few articles saying that the club was under investigation, some evidence left behind pointed to them.

“Your dad said nothing would come back to me. He said they had preventative measures in place. Those were the words he used:
preventive measures
. I just guessed that meant he had someone else to take the fall.”

I nodded. “Someone besides his club, yes.”

“Good, then.”

I thought I was naïve. This kid was something else. “No, Harris. Bad, then. There is no scapegoat. My father will throw you to the dogs before you can say ‘heel’. I think you need to hear the full story.”

“I’m confused.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me much. My father is playing you, Harris. The Devil’s Branch had nothing to do with bringing down the drug lord. In fact, my father’s club was working with him, trafficking product across the West Coast. Another club did the dirty work and made it seem like the D.B.s.”

Any confidence that Harris had died. Those initial visions of Aaron died along with it. The power was mine, all I had to do was lay down the right cards at the right times.

I went on. “My father will throw you under the bus at the first hint of trouble, if he doesn’t kill you first.” I stifled a laugh. “Personally, I hate the man, so anything he promised you related to me was made under very false pretenses.”

“Fuck this noise.” Harris reached into his pocket, and I pictured a gun coming out. I almost ran for it, but then he said, “I’m getting him on the phone. This shit stinks.”

As he pulled up his phone, I let out a heavy sigh and tried to ignore the sweat on my forehead. “Calling him is exactly what you should do. I can prove to you how untrustworthy he is. He’ll talk to you about loyalty until you die of boredom, but the man doesn’t have a loyal bone in his body.”

“The fuck you talking about?” Harris’s voice was unsteady. I didn’t like it. I had no idea what he was capable of, so I had to stay in control of the situation.

I raised my hands, bathing them in the headlights. “Listen to me. I told you I can’t stand the man. I’m not pulling any funny business. He sent me alone, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

I turned around even though it left me vulnerable. I had to take the chance. “I bet you anything that he’s nearby. Not close enough to hear, but I’m sure he has eyes on us.”

 
Looking into the darkness around the airport, I couldn’t help but take in the deep, stagnant silence. I faced Harris again, a smile on my face. “Go for it. You should call him. He’s never been great with technology, and if you listen real close, something tells me you’ll hear
Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
.”

I had found that cockiness that Harris had lost. He tapped at the screen on his phone and held it up to his ear. I turned around, expecting to hear my father’s ringtone right away. My heart pounded hard as I waited for that sweet vindication. Harris rustled behind me, and I turned back.

He still had the phone up to his ear, but his other hand held a gun pointed right between my eyes. “You really better hope the line’s not dead.”

 
“Whoa, whoa.” I stepped back and raised my hands. “Easy now.”

The gun didn’t budge. “Shut the fuck up. I’m
trying
to listen.”

I couldn’t hear anything, but my heart pounding in my ears. God, I had been such a fucking idiot to think that I can be as tough and strong as the bikers that I hung out with. Romero should’ve come with me. Any of the Rising Sons could have come with me.

With my eyes locked on Harris, my ears strained to hear the ringtone. As soon as I tried to listen for something, I realized just how cluttered the world was with sound. Crickets, a moving windsock, even tics and knocks from Harris’s pickup truck flooded my ears.

My mind was already reeling for some alternative argument. If I can convince him of something else, I might still get out alive.

Then I heard it. At first I thought it was just my mind willing the sounds to be there, but the tinny acoustic guitar couldn’t be mistaken. My head darted around, searching for the origin. It was off to my left, near a small hanger. I squinted and saw a flash of light, probably his attempt to silence the call.

Harris still held the gun aimed at me. “That don’t prove a thing.”

My voice was low, “It proves that my father is a liar. Now listen close. He’s going to come over and lay on the charm like you’ve never seen. Here’s my proposal: give the guns to the Rising Sons in exchange for protection. My father won’t trust you anymore. He’ll know I tried to turn you.”

“What?” Harris kept his voice low. “What in the hell is happening?”

“The deal is going south, Harris. Stay with me and we’ll both walk away from this. Lose your head, lose your life. Agree to whatever he says, but know that he will take you down. The second that you deliver the merchandise, you’re a dead man. For fuck’s sake, he’s my father, and he won’t hesitate to do the same thing to me.”

I turned back toward the sound. He was coming, a shit-eating grin on his face. My father kept his gaze on Harris, not daring to look at me. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

There was panic in Harris’s eyes. The gun was still trained on me, but when my father spoke, he swung it over and pointed it at Captain. My father didn’t even react. He kept walking toward the man with the gun. “Oh, come on, now. Things don’t need to get violent, do they?” My father let out a laugh. I had to admire his dedication.

“I’m so fucking lost right now. What the hell are you doing here, Captain?”

I kept my hands up even though Harris had the gun on my father.
Be cool
, I thought.
Just be cool, Harris
. If he was trigger-happy, my father could get a bullet on accident, and I would get one on purpose.

The smile in my father’s face somehow got wider. “Came to see you, buddy. I was actually supposed to come with my beautiful daughter here, but she was in a bit of a hurry, I guess.”

Harris’s eyes jumped back and forth between me and my father. Could see his brain trying to put all the pieces together; trying to figure out who was who. I kept my hands held high, not wanting to pose a threat to him. My father, on the other hand, lowered his and try to take another step toward Harris.

The confused kid aimed the gun higher, and my father stopped in his tracks. “Easy, easy now. Let’s just put the gun down and talk through this. Just a miscommunication, nothing more.”

“You said we would be meeting alone. You said it would just be Julie and me. I… I don’t know what to think.”

“I think you should put the gun down, that would be a great start.” My father kept his voice calm, but I can see that quiet anger in his eyes. I can also see that his right hand was dipping a little too low. My father was armed, and he was reaching for his piece.

Harris lowered the gun, and some of the tension in the air disappeared. “Sorry, Captain. I just got startled. That’s all.”

My father’s right hand came back up as he crossed his arms over his chest. Harris didn’t know how close he came.

The kid slid his gun into his jeans. “Your daughter and I were just finalizing things.”

My father turned to me, a comically happy look on his face. “Oh yeah?” Harris probably couldn’t hear it, but the sarcasm was thick. “While that is just good news, I tell ya. Good news all around.”

Harris looked to me, but I had no idea what to say. For a few seconds, there was a desperately awkward silence. I finally dragged some words to the surface. “So you and I are good, right, Harris?”

All three of us knew we couldn’t trust any of the other people standing around us, but Harris and I didn’t have a choice. The kid nodded at me, and I had to take that as his word.

With tensions sinking, I looked back and forth between the two men. “Well, Captain, are we good here?”

My father’s eyes were still locked on Harris. I knew my old man. He was still hoping for Harris to draw his gun. In this case, my father’s one track mindedness helped me. If he was too busy thinking about swinging his big dick around, Captain might not realize he had been double-crossed.

My father’s voice was gruff. He didn’t sound happy at all as he said, “Yeah. I guess were good.”

He didn’t move as Harris backed around the front of his pickup truck. Nobody took their eyes off each other as Harris pulled the driver side door open. After that, everything happen in such a blur that I barely had time to react.

Harris— the stupid kid— reached for his gun. Something triggered inside him, and he thought to get away with a little bit of firepower. My eyes widened as I saw him reach for it, because I knew my father was fast. Before Harris even have the gun raised, my father was squeezing off rounds.

As the sound of gunfire filled the night, my body and instincts took over. I ran for it. The run for Faith’s BMW felt like a marathon. Bullets penetrated metal and shattered glass behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around.

There was no hiding the sweat by the time got to the car. Fumbling with the key, I tried not to think about was happening behind me. Once inside, I let the BMW do its thing. I had to get to the Rising Sons’ club, and fast. There was no stopping the war that was coming.

 
At some point, the BMW got back on the main road. I headed east and back into town. My phone vibrated, and I was certain it would be my father. I just knew that Harris was bleeding somewhere, trying to remember the Lord’s Prayer. I dug out my phone and was surprised to see that he wasn’t dead.

Your promises better be a hell of a lot better than his. Let your boys know I’m in.

He may have been a creep and a horn-dog, but that kid could handle himself in a fight if he was still standing against my dad. I wondered if my father had been as lucky. Knowing Harris was alive, I guess that they both ran out of ammunition and went their separate ways. I replied to Harris, letting him know where the club was. He may have survived the battle, but he had just joined the list of people my father wouldn’t let live.